Supporters of the CSIRO often claim that without government funding, they would not be able to effectively work out new ways of destroying the world, or setting up robot armies to dominate us all, and so on, and so on. On the other hand, maybe private initiative would be able to step in and help out? Although the philanthropic organisation SPECTRE, devoted to the charitable goals of annihilating democracy and bending the rest of the world to its will, has fallen by the wayside of late, it is true that there remain hundreds of other private interests and charitable societies with similar goals in mind. Pokemon, for instance. Perhaps they would be able to fund the activities of Australian scientists instead?

Also, this may seem controversial, but I'll say it anyway: why should the Government be relied upon to dominate the world, and conquer the universe? Shouldn't this be the responsibility, equally, of private world-domination companies, who can do it, off the public dollar?

Destroying the world: is it a public good, or a private responsibility? It's a dilemma we must all face up to from time to time.

I tend to agree, but once the world-destruction research has been outsourced, as is often the case, to a company in an overseas country, Australians are wont to get a little miffed. Sure, they argue. They may have destroyed the world. But what's that got to do with the price of eggs?

Subscription based, so if the CSIRO comes up with an army it will only blow up the subscribers? Other people will get left out because they haven't been paying up.

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Of course, if you have been paying up and then you die and your corpse rots away, you will get priority for your corpse to be brought back to life as a zombie. You will also get first pick should they want people to tune into and splice open to replant brains into and stick into dancing jellyfish who can rewrite Thackeray and draw paint Ken Done pics.